%run jam_theme.py
bar_chart = a.plot_bar(df)
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Although NYC is home to an avid cycling community its streets have not been a particularly safe space to ride. This past year saw nominally fewer injuries to cyclists as a result of collisions with motor vehicles, however, it also saw the most deaths in the past 6 years -- for as long as this number has been published in NYC Open Data. A nearly 3x increase in deaths over the previous year led the cycling community to demand change and forced Mayor de Blasio to respond. The following charts explore the how the cyclist community and city government took action, and tries to shed light on whether or not their efforts complement one another in achieving a bikeable city.
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chart1
While citizens can submit 311 tickets, also known as service requests, for a host of reasons, any mention of 311 tickets in the following charts refers to those submitted to NYPD, notifying them of a car in a bike lane. In the above chart, both the number of 311 tickets submitted by New Yorkers and the number of parking violations issued by the NYPD to cars parked in a bike lane appear to follow the same trend since January of 2017. The most notable aspect is that they both dramatically increase in the summer of 2019. Tragically, this past summer NYC cyclists suffered an unprecedented number of deaths. In response, the cyclist community urged Mayor de Blasio to act. His first response was to call upon NYPD urging them to better protect the bike lanes. He went on to designate a "mass enforcement period" during the final three weeks of July. An increase in parking violations may be part of this response, but did they also address tickets submitted by cyclists?
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chart3
An increase in 311 tickets does not result in longer response times for the majority of precincts. In 2019 several police precincts -- 9, 13, and 6 -- responded to 662, 811, 668 more tickets, respectively, and issued more parking violations over the previous year without an increase in median response time. Although, with a median response time between 1 and 2 hours, it's likely that the car has already left the bike lane by the time NYPD arrives. So, how are all of these tickets addressed?
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chart4
While it's clear that the NYPD resolved more 311 tickets in 2019 than they ever have, the above plot also shows that historically a small portion of tickets result in a parking violation. During the July 2019 enforcement period, NYPD issued parking violations for 57 tickets and concluded that 2,310 tickets lacked sufficient evidence, meaning the car was never in the bike or it had already left by the time they arrived.
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chart5
While 311 tickets often do not result in an immediate violation, there appears to be a critical number of tickets that forces a response from the NYPD, as seen by the number of parking violations. Two clusters emerge when looking at the total number of requests and parking violations per week. Until the number of requests breaches 300 per week, the number of violations hovers between 1200 and 2000. Once above 300 weekly tickets, we see the number of weekly violations cluster between 2,200 and 2,800.
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chart6
Both 2017 and 2018 exhibit similar clusters in terms of weekly 311 tickets and 311 violations, while 2019 sees a dramatic increase in both. The July 2019 enforcement period is a clear outlier in terms of both violations and requests; the week of July 21st saw the largest number of parking violations for all of 2019, while the week of July 28th saw largest number of tickets. Interestingly, while the number of total 311 tickets tapers off after the summer response, total parking violations exceed 2,500 per week well into November -- totals greater than the highest weeks in 2017 and 2018.
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requests_chorpleth
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Given Mayor de Blasio's designation of a NYPD Enforcement Period to increase patrol of bike lanes, and the NYC cyclist community's demand for change in response to the tragic deaths that occurred in summer of 2019, I wanted to determine if the efforts from each group were aligned. While the cyclists submitted 311 tickets in response to blocked bike lanes in Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and lower Manhattan, the NYPD targeted Midtown South (district 14) and the Upper West Side (district 34). It appears that while the Mayor's July Enforcement Period resulted in more parking violations for blocked bike lanes, they do not appear to be in the areas where cyclists are asking for help.